Call of Duty: WW2 confirms return to World War 2 as worldwide reveal trailer date set

Call of Duty is heading back to World War 2 later this year in the latest game from publisher Activision and developer Sledgehammer Games. Call of Duty: WW2 was officially revealed on Twitter following a leak in March.

WW2 will mark the first game in the series set during the conflict since 2008's World at War.

A "Worldwide Reveal" has been promised and will take place on Wednesday 26 April at 6pm BST (7pm CET, 1pm EDT, 10am PDT). The first trailer showing gameplay from the title will be expected to be released at that time.

Promotional artwork and prospective box art leaked in late March, seeming to confirm the series would be "going back to its roots" as Activision executive Eric Hishberg put it during a company investor call in February.

The return to a historical conflict follows an excursion into more overt futuristic sci-fi with 2016's Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, which didn't resonate with fans and isn't thought to have met the sales of 2015's Black Ops 3 .

However, given the three-year development cycle is on and the timing of Sledgehammer's last Call of Duty title, 2014's Advanced Warfare, the decision to return to World War 2 would have been made well before Infinite Warfare's release.

The very first Call of Duty released back in 2002 was set during World War 2, as was each subsequent game until 2007's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. That game marked a move into contemporary times and ratcheted the series' popularity up to another level, setting the template for future games to come.

In the years since, the series has gradually grown more futuristic. With Infinite Warfare the action moved off the surface of Earth, and with that the series appeared to lose a little of what made it successful in the first place.